Paging Dr. Jones; Ford Wants to play Indy and Jack Ryan Again

Paging Dr. Jones; Ford Wants to play Indy and Jack Ryan Again

Lucasfilm has launched an unusual promo for today’s DVD release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Here’s the Lucasfilm marketing memo:

Greetings,

On behalf of our promotional partner Papa John’s, I wanted to make sure you received the news about their fun “Indiana Jones” promotion to celebrate today’s DVD and Blu-Ray release of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

It offers a free Papa John’s pizza to anyone in the United States named “Dr. Jones” — and if they live in Indiana, they’ll get a DVD, as well!

Also promoting the DVD is Moviefone, which posts a Harrison Ford Q & A complete with confession that 1) he’s not necessarily passing the fedora to Shia LaBeouf just yet, and 2) he’d love to do another Tom Clancy sequel. Hear that, Paramount? They replaced Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan with Ford, then replaced Ford with a much younger Ben Affleck. That series is stalled under current management and is in need of a major recharge.

Recently I watched the ultimate Jack Ryan movie, The Hunt for Red October, with pleasure for the nth time. Every time it comes on cable, I can’t help myself. What is it about this movie that makes me so happy? Director John McTiernan is in his prime, with DP Jan DeBont at his side; the script by Larry Ferguson and Donald Stewart is crisp. The actors–Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sean Connery, Sam Neill, Stellan Skarsgard–are all in top form.

I asked Glenn at the W party about Red October. He beamed, because it’s one of his fave roles too, maybe his best. He told me how he followed a submarine captain around for a while and decided to base the entire character on him: glasses, subdued manner, everything. “Maybe the movie is about bringing out the best in these characters,” he said.

Hmmm. There is something satisfying about how these men are really good at their jobs, listen to each other, and act optimistically, in the hope that the other side will do the right thing. These are people you can rely on.